27 January 2013

All of a sudden, over the past several months, all the parking meters in OTR have been getting vandalized.
damaged parking meter

Meter laying on sidewalk

I suppose they are taking these and selling them for scrap metal, but the expense to replace and repair these must be costing the taxpayers quite a lot. See this Enquirer article a few weeks back.
Actions like this make privatization of the meters, which I very much oppose, even more attractive to City leaders.

Posted by
CityKin

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I don't know if I completely buy that broken windows theory (wasn't that James Q. Wilson?) but on the chance that it might be right, the city ought to be replacing these immediately.

I think privatizing the meters is the worse idea ever. If it does come to pass, I hope the city is very, very careful about the terms.

In Chicago, every time a street is closed, whether it be for a block party, street repair or whatever, the city must pay the parking meter company for all of their theoretically lost revenue -- which I imagine is calculated at the highest rate possible.

According to this article, the private company claims Chicago now owes them $50 million. Nice work if you can get it, I guess. cityhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/chicago-parking-meter-sel_n_1543305.html